Drew
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Posts posted by Drew
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27 minutes ago, Helene said:
I always hear that unless they hate it, people are attached to the first production they see, and that becomes the baseline. That may be why I love the Blair production I saw in the '70's...
That sounds likely to be true and should teach me humility, but honesty compels me to add that my real feeling is that we were very lucky to have our baseline tastes formed by a production that was not without modernizations (e.g. no Benno in Act II) but still rather less rewritten (or rechoreographed) than many others ...
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On 6/3/2022 at 2:30 PM, volcanohunter said:
I have to reinterate that this is not the standard of a principal dancer. Makhar Vaziev has brought the Bolshoi low.
Parts of this are very awkward indeed but I just now noticed that it was posted in December 2018. I gather you feel that this is still how Kovalyova dances today, but I am still a bit wary of citing videos from much older performances to establish where a dancer is. Or at least I think the date of the video should be noted. All of us have seen lots of growth in many young dancers especially over the course of 3 1/2 years. Youtube videos are often videos of debuts which aggravates the problem.
I have no dog in this race. When I saw Kovalyova live in 2019 in Swan Lake, I would have said she didn't then look ready to be a principal--though as noted above I did find her rather charming. (And I was not mystified or irritated by the company's interest in developing her.) But I'm not going to hold a 2018 video against a dancer in 2022.
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6 hours ago, Mashinka said:
Thanks for that link Volcanohunter. In the present climate I suppose this following comment was inevitable
"I understand Nikolai and his pain, anger at our modern and shameful ballet... Unfortunately, politics is not enough here.... The West and Europe do not need the luxurious and best Russian ballet in the world, as it was in the USSR - they need debauchery and vulgarity. They enjoy when they trample on Russia in all its guises and trample on, corrupt our talented, brilliant peoples for decades ...."
That's telling us!!!
I'm a little confused--when I went to the Etudes link comments were turned off and none were visible. Has it been taken down? Or were you looking at another link?
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1 hour ago, canbelto said:
T he McKenzie SL simply butchers the final act. I hate it. I also hate the cheesy decor.
21 minutes ago, nysusan said:There are lots of things I dislike about this production but the butchered & truncated final act (or final scene in this production) is what I hate the most and what really kills it for me.
Ditto (except that I remember liking much of the decor -- the Lake scenes feel Pre-Raphaelite to me).
David Blair's version with entirely new sets and costumes would suit me fine or something more or less descended from the Royal Ballet De Valois version on which Blair's was (presumably) based....Maybe with a historically 'reconstructed' Petipa waltz for Act I.
I don't need a pious, historically reconstructed Swan Lake from ABT--though I certainly hope to see Ratmansky's one day with Miami or another compay--but a traditional one...yes...I do need it. Mckenzie's (which he probably intended as "traditional") distorts too many elements.
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Thanks for posting. (Van Manen looks great....)
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On the video I've seen and also the one time I saw her dance live (three years ago now) it has been impossible for me not to find Kovalyova rather likable and to root for her success -she has a twinkle in her eye I find quite appealing. But the news did surprise me.
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14 hours ago, Roberta said:
...You are quite correct in your feelings that we in the West will most likely not be experiencing the Mariinsky, Bolshoi and other Russian ballet troupes for a long, long time. Makes us realize how very fortunate we in the West (UK, USA, etc.) were to have had them appear on our stages regularly, between about 1956 until 2019/20. It was almost taken for granted. Now we are about to feel what our grandparents felt -
Yes, we have been fortunate -- though the history of these tours was more uneven in time and space than this suggests. I think between the mid-sixties and the Reagan era, the Mariinsky (then Kirov) did not appear in the U.S. And I believe there was something like 10 years between the Bolshoi's visits to NY prior to the 2014 --and between then and Feb 2022 how much has the Bolshoi been seen in the U.S.--I mean on a proper company tour not as part of some festival?
Kennedy Center in D.C has been spoiled the last decade with the Mariinsky coming every year for a week--but that began with the largess of a donor (albeit one who ran out on his promises). London has recently seemed to do much better: for a while it had alternating years of Bolshoi and Mariinsky tours--three weeks usually, too.
Aside from geopolitics I think the big issue for these tours, especially to the United States, is costs which now appear to be prohibitive without obscenely wealthy donors. Possibly once the war in Ukraine is over and assuming some economic relations with Russia are normalized (not a certainty especially if the war ends in a stalemate of some kind) the Russian government itself might want to underwrite them....but who knows?
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On 5/28/2022 at 12:46 PM, angelica said:
...she [Trenary] seems to have many gigs that she arranges outside the auspices of ABT that allow her to do contemporary work, unlike Shevchanko and Brandt, who are, currently, at the top of my own personal roster.
I don't know what goes on behind the scenes at ABT but there may be a chicken-egg question to ask about any dancer's extra curricular activities. If Trenary was being cast in more principal parts, then maybe she would not be arranging as many other gigs. And, yes, maybe she would. But I don't know how one can be sure, especially in the context of the pandemic which has probably made many dancers hungrier. And I believe ABT in normal times still dances less than some of the other major companies.
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Just a terribly sad story....Best thoughts to her family and friends and the whole Ballet Arizona community...
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I have seen Skorik just twice live. I thought her Raymonda a few years ago in D.C. was lovely--even quite wonderful in the dream-vision scene and the grand pas at the end. And of the three Raymondas I saw she was the only one who didn't muck up the moment with the lyre which is one of my favorite moments in the ballet--the two other ballerinas both slipped/stumbled while handling it. (Possibly bad luck or a slippery spot on stage for the latter two at those performances, but still...Skorik is the one I saw pull that moment off.) Her Bayadere which I saw the next year in D.C. was a bit disappointing by comparison, though it had some appealing qualities. I will add that in everything I have heard or read about her during both of those runs, people reacted to her rather differently depending on which performance they attended. (And people who saw her multiple times seemed to confirm the unevenness.)
Quite a bit of time has passed since those tours to Kennedy Center. I certainly don't have a good sense of how she is dancing now, but leaving video out of it, I'd say that based on those two performances, I'd be happy to see her again live. At the moment I am not at all confident I will get the chance. -
I hope no-one is injured...but I somehow hope at the same time that Trenary gets to make her Swan Lake debut....
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2 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:
I am not in Finland, and I was able to watch by clicking on the embedded video at the top of the page.
To double check, I set my VPN to the United States and was able to play the video. Could it be a browser issue?
Thank you. I thought I had done what you did, but just tried doing it again and the video started up. So, either I or my internet connection was not working properly earlier (both real possibilities but let's hope it was the latter). Unfortunately, it's too late to watch now, but in theory, yes, I should be able to see this! I'm glad they are leaving it up for a while....
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On 5/14/2022 at 5:08 PM, ppw said:
Ballet Sibeliu, Finnish Naitonal Ballet, New and Free
Do you know if it is geoblocked for certain parts of the world? The link took me to the announcement but when I failed to find a link to the actual performance I clicked on "info" and the performance window it seemed to be "greyed out." In any case I couldn't click on anything that worked to take me to anything other than background to the ballet.
(I have tried VPNs to get geoblocked performances and never had anything other than bad or confusing luck with them--theaters just identify the fact I'm using a VPN--so I've stopped trying.)
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4 hours ago, California said:
According to ABT On Pointe, which just arrived in the mail, Misty Copeland and husband Olu Evans "welcomed their first child on April 2, 2022." (p. 2 - Company News)
Lovely news--Congratulations to them!
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I was intrigued to read about this line up though I guess that if I lived in San Francisco no Balanchine and no Ratmansky might be a bit disappointing--less so if I felt confident they were returning, as I think I would. Also: since Possokhov is listed in the festival line-up, I'm wondering, if some observers will raise questions about Possokhov's continued working at/with the Bolshoi at the present time.
But I'm mostly writing to say that I have very much liked Claudia Schreier's work for Atlanta Ballet. Her ballet, First Impulse was on the program at the last ballet performance I attended live. That was its premier season--and a nourishing memory since then for my starved ballet soul. In the meanwhile Atlanta hired her as resident choreographer and then....Covid upended the next season. However, during the Pandemic she did still create Pleiades Dances for them and the company performed it as part of an outdoor engagement in March 2021 (dancers were masked though you can hardly tell on the video the company posted on Vimeo).
When I watched it, I thought Pleiades Dances a bit less distinctive than First Impulse, probably because I was watching it on video, but perhaps also because it seemed to me a little less neo-classical and thus more like other new choreography than First impulse. I still found it very engaging. And of course most of Pleiades Dances had to be created via Zoom. (In Atlanta Pleiades Dances has been done this year as part of a regular repertory program in the theater but I did not attend those performances.) I plan to watch it again.
I'll add that I have found Schreier's choices of music both wonderful and unexpected -- I could wish Justin Peck had similar taste. From what I read on her website, she has been choreographing for a while, but it is still relatively early in her career; at this point I am eager to see (or read about) whatever she does.
Below are two links--very brief video of First Impulse (whose diagonals I take as an allusion to Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements) and below that, Pleiades Dances in its entirety as that was posted as part of the Pandemic conditions of its premier. Of course, you can also find other snippets of her work on youtube:
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Amsterdam is a city of canals -- as is Smirnova's hometown St. Petersburg. (Though in other respects they are very different.)
Who knows where she will end up, but I imagine she will get a chance at her dream of dancing with the Paris Opera Ballet.
(She danced with ABT as a guest artist when she was very young--a performance with Muntagirov, also very young at the time.)
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5 hours ago, naomikage said:
Putin's daughter is said to be in a relationship with the ex-head of the Munich State Ballet, Igor Zelensky.
Also on Russian media.
https://istories.media/amp/investigations/2022/05/19/myunkhenskaya-doch-vladimira-putina/
In English
Oooooh.........
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10 hours ago, abatt said:
Maybe I'm Old Fashioned is now deemed too traditional and not hip enough to merit revival by the current administration. Better to keep showing The Runaway.
While I am delighted to read Piano Pieces is back in the rep ... and would not mind seeing other Robbins rarities revived --Four Bagatelles is one I'm curious about--I must admit I can live without I'm Old Fashioned which I have always found disappointing. (I have seen it a number of times and used to keep expecting to love it--thinking "well that other performance must have been an off night" or "maybe the cast was the problem" etc.)
I don't think anyone would take me for hip...
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4 hours ago, California said:
Flames of Paris is another historically interesting piece from the 30s, made in response to Stalin's request to show the decadence of the west, and I suspect Bolshoi will continue to show it. It also is chock full of flashy choreography and bits of it keep showing up in gala shows in the west. It will survive for that reason alone, if not others.
Messerer did a terrific revival for the Mikhailovsky that stays closer to the original libretto. I saw it live in NY when they brought it on tour. I have only seen Ratmansky's on video so can’t make an entirely fair comparison, but as best I can tell Messerer’s frank embrace of the ballet’s Soviet approach made for a more coherent ballet than Ratmansky’s attempt to graft an anti-revolutionary message onto it —however interesting one may find the latter. (Also the Mikhailovsky put character specialists in the Basque dance and....WOW! Even the Bolshoi’s most exciting classical dancers couldn’t put it over quite so well.) If the Bolshoi had to give up Ratmansky’s I suppose they might pick up the Messerer version....if they even care about keeping it in repertory beyond having the pas de deux as a gala number.
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On 5/9/2022 at 8:53 PM, volcanohunter said:
I really felt for Ratmansky when he described the feeling of sand castles crumbling behind him as he made his departure from Moscow. Under any circumstances knowing that months of heart and soul, blood, sweat and tears have suddenly come to naught is extremely painful. But the haunting feeling that ballet doesn't really matter a whole lot in the face of such cataclysmic circumstances must have been eviscerating.
I was thinking about this the other evening. Ratmansky has a number of productions in Russia that may never be revived and not all of them have also been performed--or are likely to be taken up--outside of Russia. I am thinking, for example, of Little Humpbacked Horse, which I enjoyed and would be sorry to see lost from the ballet repertory, but which obviously carries associations for a Russian audience that it could never have outside of Russia...
It has been a long time since the Bolshoi revived Lost Illusions, but that's a ballet I have always been very curious about. It was likely a lost cause anyway, but now, seemingly for sure....(Ratmansky himself talks about The Bolt as a failure--so, another lost cause--but I LOVE the video that exists of it.) I assume a western company might at some point be interested in his historically informed Giselle, but who knows?
Bright Stream has been done by non-Russian companies but seems as if it should be done by a Russian company and has a more natural home at the Bolshoi than it could ever have in the U.S. or even in Latvia...(What was always the troubling irony of the operetta-ish plot set on a 1930's collective farm when that period of collectivization was, shall we say, not at all operetta-ish might now, in the wake of the war in Ukraine, rule it out-of-bounds anywhere other than Russia anyway.)
I have found myself wondering if the Bolshoi might keep Ratmansky's Flames of Paris on the (not completely absurd) grounds that it's really their ballet and, indeed a chunk of the choreography is Vainonen's...
Anyway, a lot of Ratmansky's legacy in Russia is pretty much sand castles now, not just the two ballets he was working on....However little that legacy weighs or seems to weigh "in the face of such cataclysmic circumstances" -- it is still a real loss that ballet lovers who admire Ratmansky can feel and mourn.
I'll add that the losses of "The Art of the Fugue" for the Bolshoi and the Pharoh's Daughter revival for the Mariinsky seem enormous to me at both ends of the Ratmansky spectrum: new, music-inspired, non-narrative choreography and historically informed revivals of much older narrative ballets....
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Thanks for posting! This looks terrific--
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Trenary posted on her instagram that she has been working with Lynn Seymour on Juliet. That caught my attention --especially after reading about Trenary's Giselle. Wish I could see that debut...
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48 minutes ago, Jacqueline said:
Ashley Laracey also reported on her Instagram story that she has COVID and will have to miss her debuts in Orpheus and Apollo this week.
24 minutes ago, abatt said:Poor Laracey. She's been waiting so long for these roles and opportunities.
I was very sad to read about her illness...Would love to see her in both ballets and if not see her at least read about her performances (as would have been the case this season).
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3 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said:
[...]
I have a different questions based on that statement, and it has nothing to do with management's actions. I don't see it as management making an excuse for not casting her. If someone loves an activity and are pursuing it professionally, like law... as a random example, why would that person be so wounded not to be cast in a ballet? It seems counter to the '$200,000 for emotional distress' argument and counter to the things she told the reporter during her interview half a year after her retirement.
People have complex, mixed, and even contradictory feelings about things that are important to them -- Stafford's feelings may be too.
Speaking publicly about problems at work may be professionally unwise, but Stafford is, at any rate, changing professions. (I am agnostic about whether she faced mistreatment at the company.)
Being a dancer is hard. I know other jobs are hard too and many of us are acculturated to put up with stuff, and much of it should be put up with because even having a job, especially a good job, a creative and well-paid one, is a gift (in our society anyway). I also know better than to think that every complaint against management is justified. Being a company director is hard too. Still, in the world of dance, I can't help but feel some human sympathy with those who break the 'thin pink line' now and then. (And putting Stafford's individual case aside, the ballet world can probably use more honesty about several issues.)
As for the Times's role...the fact that the article has generated so much discussion here--even negative discussion--seems to confirm the editor's judgment. People are checking the article out and talking about it.
Is Alyona Kovalyova "Zvezda" material ??
in Bolshoi Ballet
Posted
Thank you. If I understand the context correctly --I'm dependent on Google Translate-- then the critical Tsiskaridze comments being discussed were focused at least as much on today's Bolshoi ballet as the "west" (which the comment you quoted brought into it)...Actually the comments featured in print, the only ones I can get translated, are exclusively dissing today's Bolshoi (which, presumably, Tsiskaridze sees himself as the best person to fix). As he himself points out, he doesn't spare his own students either.